Paul J.J. Sinclair (1949-2023): a tribute

My first acquaintance with Paul goes back to an early South African Archaeological Society meeting in 1975, when Professor Revil Mason at Wits provided informal guidance to our incipient archaeological work.  Mozambique had recently became independent and a few of us (namely Ricardo T. Duarte, who soon founded the Antiquities Services, and Teresa Cruz e Silva, who joined the emerging Center for African Studies) were passionately setting up the first Archaeological Unit under the National Research Institute. During our Cape Town meeting Paul expressed his wish to come to us, but at the time we could not offer him a job. He therefore went to Rhodesia to take up a curatorial position at Great Zimbabwe, and soon thereafter made me aware that he did not have much time before he would be forced into compulsory military service in Ian Smith’s army.  

A timely blessing: in haste I managed to have an employment contract approved and I wrote to Paul accordingly, asking him to bear with us for a bit longer until the whole (complicated) paperwork could be formalised … to realise –in a matter of days– through an urgent telephone call from the Mozambican Border Police, that "there was a man at the Naamacha Swaziland border driving a shabby Rhodesian-registered Land Rover, claiming that he had been offered a job at Eduardo Mondlane University". I asked the officer to please wait until later in the day (they were threatening to arrest the undocumented intruder!) before being able to rush to the border authorities with an official paper testifying in his favour… Fast forward: you would not be surprised, knowing Paul, that no matter repeated appeals, he decided to keep unaltered his unique Land Rover with arch-enemy’s number plates for many, many years, in fact throughout the war with Rhodesia and South Africa… And so it was that soon after taking up residence, being particularly social and joyful as only Paul could be, he quickly adapted to a new language, society and the recurrent pains of living in times of atrocious food shortage, regional bloodshed and –soon after– the horrible mozambican civil war leading up to a million casualties. But I do not recall hearing a word of complaint: Paul had a remarkable sense of belonging and identity, moral courage and generosity, qualities hard to find. His rather rebellious and resilient nature, I later found out, ran in his veins from Scottish and Polish ancestry.

Paul and I excavated the Zimbabwe at Manyikeni in warfare days, even when landmines were being planted by Rhodesian forces not far away from the site we were excavating and where one of their helicopters once flew over us to make sure we did not pose a military threat. We were lucky and determined; and particularly it mattered much that Paul set loyalty and courage above all considerations. It was in Maputo, in the late 70’s  that he met the love of his life, Amelie (working as an agronomist in northern Mozambique, before moving back to Maputo where they married in April 1979, and where Leszek, their first child, was born). And the rest is history, which many of you shared with him later on in Uppsala and beyond, where he carried on being recognised by his gaiety, unselfishness, and humour. Above any other person I’ve met, Paul was particularly gifted and instrumental in organising critical funding, which allowed many institutions and individuals to expand their scientific skills for the benefit of archaeological excellence in the developing world.

I will be eternally grateful to Paul for having made his Swedish family my family (as I once had done for him), particularly during the worst time of my life when, for personal and painful reasons, I choose to leave Mozambique; and for sharing with me so many of his own friends and colleagues when he invited me to join him as a guest researcher at Uppsala (1985-87). I am enormously grateful that he led me to Ray Inskeep’s academic supervision in Oxford (Ray had taught him in Cape Town along with John Parkington). With Paul and Ray, and many of you reading this note, I always felt blessed by empathy and acceptance, kindness and a strong sense of fellowship. When (read ‘often’) in trouble, Paul and I used to remind ourselves of the Portuguese saying that ’Neither good nor evil can last forever’; and that a country without its past is doomed to live in everlasting exile and oblivion. Time and again we fought hard to have archaeology recognised as a national priority deserving academic dignity, often against totalitarian forces favouring marxist-oriented disciplines of a more ‘pragmatic’ nature; and above all, we struggled hard and firm for the survival of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology we had created. But ultimately decisive, Paul, against all odds, always kept a remarkable sense of mission and dedication, a quality that made him a beloved leader and an outstanding mentor. He will be deeply missed…

... Yet, a glowing light never fades away: as I look up to the wintry sky - faraway and still so near - I recognise a wonderful new star lighting-up our paths and encouraging our own brief journey

Photo: Paul in his Scottish outfit, seated and cuddled up by Amelie's arm, at Anki de Morais' painting exhibition ('The Colours of my Heart') in the Old City, Stockholm, 27 November 2021.

P.S.: A comprehensive obituary by Anneli Ekblom is also available at https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2024.2325316